Do you have a list of the files that you retained for Textmaker alone?

I'm attaching a zipped text file containing the list. Note that this is a portable version (contains portable.txt) so that Textmaker knows to look for its configuration files in that folder. I ran each of the executables before stripping out the files. This setup the /Softmaker and /.softmaker folders in /freeoffice-textmaker. Ordinarily they would be setup in /root.

If I was to make an installable .pet I would leave in the /inst folder (which I deleted) which contains the files necessary to setup /root/Softmaker and /root/.softmaker.

If I were a developer, I'd fork LibreOffice Writer into a single program separate from the other components in the office suite and make it independent from Java. It'd become a smaller word processor with more stability and functions than Abiword.

You may want to try OpenOffice-light.
It is not the writer only but at 80MB is pretty fast._________________Kids all over the world go around with an XO laptop. They deserve one puppy (or many) too

EDIT: Getting a startup error afterall... but don't have time to look into the reason at the moment:
"Error opening /root/%F.doc (Path not found)". Program works if I just ignore the error though. Probably just need to remove the %F in the Exec section of the desktop entries below (or maybe use something like "$@" instead of %F)

After running the installfreeoffice script, instead of the default /usr/share/freeoffice, I chose /mnt/home/freeoffice as the directory where I wanted to install the applications. I just accepted the defaults for everything else.

After installation, I modified the installed desktop files provided for textmaker, planmaker, and presentations in /usr/share/applications. I then executed the command fixmenus in a terminal, and finally restarted JWM window manager from the desktop Menu start button. All seems to work fine using the following desktop file entries, which now point to the appropriate desktop icons in /mnt/home/freeoffice/icons. Only just checked all these program start up okay at this stage, and probably there are better ways to install. Works okay for me though...:

EDIT2: Prior to first main use of textmaker, I personally prefer to first open and modify the document Templates2012/Normal.tmv followed by re-saving it. Generally, what I do is highlight the first character in Normal.tmv and change the font size to 12 (because I find default fontsize 10 too small)_________________Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.

I find that the program works better if i turn off the auto backup every few minutes or so.

Softmaker presentation is slower than powerpoint office when editing slides but it has some great features that powerpoint doesn't have. After creating a 70 slides presentation using softmaker office, I now prefer using softmaker office over powerpoint.

Another thing i discover is that if i want to save slides created using softmaker to powerpoint format, i must save it to powerpoint 97 and not xp/2003 for better compatibility with powerpoint viewer. When I convert Slides created by softmaker office to powerpoint 97 , it turns out better in powerpoint viewer than when i convert slides created by libreoffice impress.

Textmaker is also great and I really like it because it opens up faster than Libreoffice. I ususally change the character style to default arial 12 pts for english western language and Mgothic 12 pts Japanese for eastern language. I then save it to textmaker templates so that net time i open up textmaker, it has my character style as default.

I have now updated an earlier post I made detailing a couple of incidents of data loss I experienced while trialling FreeOffice Textmaker. Briefly what happens is this:

- When my laptop shuts off due to lack of battery charge I reboot and try to reopen my document but Textmaker decides that it must be corrupt and recovers it from its .bak backup copy (without asking me first...).

Unfortunately the .bak is out of date (probably because the power went off before a pupsave) and Textmaker SHOULD have left the actual file alone (because my manual saving of the file to a data partition before power went off means that the actual file is good...).

Until Textmaker is altered a little to handle backup recovery better in a pupsave environment I would recommend turning off the backup ability.

I downloaded the "freeoffice.tgz" file and unpacked it to /mnt/home/freeoffice/. The reason for this is that I have a number of Puppy Linux distributions installed and I would like to use freeoffice in all of them, which requires only an installation to the hard disk and a few appropriate symbolic links.

The first time I started Textmaker, it created two folders: /.softmaker and /root/SoftMaker. Since large directories in root fill up the pupsave file, I moved the folders to /mnt/home/freeoffice and created symbolic links back to the expected locations. I installed the German templates next to English (US) templates and erased a lot of localization files that I would never need. (I was careful not to erase anything with "de" in it.) I created a desktop link for Textmaker and everything worked perfectly - except for a peculiar error in the German spell checker.

The German spell checker rejects all words containing one of the German special characters (umlaut ä, ö, ü, etc. and ß), but otherwise seems to operate correctly, even underlining old spellings like "daß" in blue.

Planmaker and Presentations also worked perfectly when launched from the command line, but with the same spell-checker problem.

Insofar as I can offer an clue to the solution of the problem, it seems to me that freeofficeand hunspell are not on the same (code) page, but I have no idea where to change the necessary setting.

SoftMaker Support could not duplicate the problem or suggest a solution.

Further experimentation revealed that this problem does not affect all Puppies.

I have not tried this with other localizations that use characters beyond the original ASCII 128, Clearly, this would be a problem for adopting Textmaker as a replacement for abiword, which I would, otherwise, heartily recommend.

Further experimentation revealed that this problem does not affect all Puppies.

Since it doesn't affect all Puppies I would guess that something in the built in /usr/bin/hunspell or /usr/share/hunspell is conflicting with FreeOffice. Check in /root/.packages/builtin_files for a complete list of hunspell files.

Try deleting them and see if the problem disappears. On a frugal, CD or USB Puppy you can get them back by deleting /initrd/pup_rw/usr/bin/.wh.hunspell, etc. On a Full install you could move them out of the file system and then copy them back in.

No, I decided that it was ok to leave the autosave setting turned on - because that was ensuring a valid save of the actual data. I figured that turning of the "create backup files" was all that was required so that Textmaker doesn't go comparing my saved data with it's own (potentially) out-of-date .bak copy.

Quote:

Or perhaps by storing docs on a fat32 partition outside of puppy altogether may make for safer recoveries.

I'm actually storing my real file on a separate ext2 partition. Textmaker was keeping it's .bak files there too. Do you mean that Textmaker may do a better job of comparing the actual file with it's .bak file if the actual file is kept on FAT32? I'm guessing probably not in this case - I think the issue was that puppy had not saved the latest .bak file or else - more likely - that there is a flag somewhere that forces Textmaker to use the .bak file, regardless of whether it is old or new. I dont know why Textmaker would "recover" from a .bak file that had an older timestamp than the actual file though. It would seem more sensible to either reject the older .bak, or else offer some options or sample recoveries to the user.